The Partition Plan:
The American Position on Partition

President Harry Truman supported the Zionist movement
because he believed the international community was
obligated to fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration
and because he believed it was the humanitarian thing
to do to ameliorate the plight of the Jewish survivors
of the Holocaust. He did not believe the rights of the
Arabs should or would be compromised. A sense of his
attitude can be gleaned from a remark he made with regard
to negotiations as to the boundaries of a Jewish state:

The whole region waits to be developed, and
if it were handled the way we developed the Tennessee
River basin, it could support from 20 to 30 million
people more. To open the door to this kind of future
would indeed be the constructive and humanitarian thing
to do, and it would also redeem the pledges that were
given at the time of World War I.

The American public supported the President's policy.
According to public opinion polls, 65% of Americans
supported the creation of a Jewish state. During the
third quarter of 1947 alone, 62,850 postcards, 1,100
letters and 1,400 telegrams flooded the White House,
most urging the President to use American influence
at the UN.

This public support was reflected in Congress where
a resolution approving the Balfour Declaration was adopted
in 1922. In 1944, both national parties called for the
restoration of the Jewish Commonwealth and, in 1945,
a similar resolution was adopted by Congress.

Rather than giving in to pressure, Truman tended to
react negatively to the "Jewish lobby." He
complained repeatedly about being pressured and talked
about putting propaganda from the Jews in a pile and
striking a match to it.

When the UN took up the question of Palestine, President
Harry Truman explicitly said the United States should
not "use threats or improper pressure of any kind
on other delegations." Some pressure was nevertheless
exerted and the U.S. played a key role in securing support
for the partition resolution. U.S. influence was limited,
however, as became clear when American dependents like
Cuba and Greece voted against partition, and El Salvador
and Honduras abstained.

Many members of the Truman Administration opposed
partition, including Defense Secretary James Forrestal,
who believed Zionist aims posed a threat to American
oil supplies and its strategic position in the region.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff worried that the Arabs might
align themselves with the Soviets if they were alienated
by the West. These internal opponents did a great deal
to undermine U.S. support for the establishment of a
Jewish state.

Although much has been written about the tactics of
the supporters of partition, the behavior of the Arab
states has been largely ignored. They were, in fact,
actively engaged in arm­twisting of their own at
the UN trying to scuttle partition.